“Which b*tch was it! You saw, didn’t you? You saw but you’re pretending you don’t know, right?”

“I, I don’t kn—Agh!”

A fist flew at her. The woman who struck her face without mercy was terrifyingly brutal. Ann took a direct hit to the nose and collapsed. Kicks followed. Dora was pathologically obsessed when it came to matters concerning her husband.

What he was doing while wandering around, why he wasn’t coming home. 

Unlike her, who received pennies for managing someone else’s household all day long, her husband was a man who never brought home a single coin yet shouted about being the head of the family. 

Despite that, with his slick appearance, he fooled around with women in the neighborhood.

“You’ve got no womanly appeal, Dora. Your younger brother was pretty. You’re not. Must be because you have a different mother, huh?”

One day, her uncle-in-law, his face flushed red from drink, glanced at Ann and muttered while looking at Dora. Dora’s face twisted violently and she burst into tears. 

Unlike Pierre, who resembled their birth mother and was quite handsome, she and her sisters were terribly plain and gained weight easily from even small amounts of food.

In comparison, her husband was four years younger than her and good-looking. That was a terrible complex for her.

“Which b*tch was it! You’re getting something from that b*stard and not telling me, right? Right?”

“N-no!”

“What do you mean no! I fed and raised you, you wretched girl!”

Dora, who’d been kicking like a madwoman, grabbed Ann by the collar, lifted her up, and screamed. Ann looked at her twisted face, half-unconscious. Dora slapped her once more, but Ann, having lost consciousness, couldn’t answer.

When day came, Dora went to work like nothing had happened. The one who took care of the unconscious Ann was the eldest daughter, Louise. 

She wiped Ann’s face as she lay sprawled like a rag in the attic and put porridge to her lips. Ann sniffled and ate the porridge fed to her by her younger cousin, who was a year younger than her.

Aunt Dora continued to strike her often after that. Ann worked frantically to avoid being hit. But her young cousins caused trouble the moment she looked away. 

Moreover, the second child and eldest son, Peter, had developmental disabilities, making him even harder to care for.

Ann was sick of it. Getting up at dawn to prepare Aunt Dora’s breakfast, monitoring her uncle-in-law on her orders. 

After chasing around her foolish siblings all day and putting them to bed before her aunt came home for months on end, she’d grown to hate ‘children’ themselves. Despite being a child herself.

It was around the time two years had passed. Ann opened her eyes at dawn. Though there was quite a bit of time left until she needed to wake up, she couldn’t fall back asleep. 

She staggered up and watched the world slowly brighten. The large window in the attic was good for watching the sunrise.

Though it was terribly cold from the severe drafts. 

She wrapped herself tightly in the blanket and thought of her mother. She seemed to know why she’d woken up early. Today was her mother’s death anniversary.

Since coming to Aunt Dora’s house, Ann hadn’t been able to visit her mother. Even though her mother’s grave wasn’t far from here…

“Mom…”

She swallowed the tears flowing hotly down. Ann went downstairs and looked at the empty kitchen. After standing there for a while, she left the house. 

She’d surely get slapped by Aunt Dora when she returned, but she didn’t care. She left the house like she was fleeing.

* * *

It was that evening when Ann left Aunt Dora’s house and went to live with the eldest sister, Aunt Rosie. Ann, who’d been beaten nearly to death, went to Rosie’s house following her, who’d stopped by for the first time in a while. 

No, since she was unconscious, it would be more accurate to say she was moved there.

“Sister, that girl is stupid and useless!”

“So you don’t need her. I have more kids than you, so I need her.”

Rosie was calm in front of Dora, who was screaming like she was having a fit. It wasn’t that Rosie felt sorry for Ann or had suddenly developed a sense of responsibility. 

The reason was simply that the girl who’d been living as a freeloader had recently gotten a bit older and left to get a factory job. Moreover, she’d had a baby in the meantime.

With an unplanned pregnancy adding another mouth to feed and circumstances not being good, it was hard to pay money to hire a young maid.

Ann was ten years old. Though small, judging by how Dora’s house, which had been like a pigsty, had become clean, her hands were clearly skillful. A child who could polish old, shabby furniture this shiny would surely be diligent in her house too.

“Anyway, I said I’m sick of her, so know that I have no regrets.”

Dora clenched her fists as she watched Ann being carried out on her nephew’s back.

The next morning, Ann opened her eyes in a low, narrow room. She’d woken up in the nursery, and the reason she’d woken was also because of a newborn’s crying. 

Ann, who’d become conditioned to react reflexively to a child’s crying, sprang up like a spring and picked up the baby from the cradle.

It was a baby she’d never seen before. Rosie, who came in opening the door with a click, smiled, seemingly pleased with the sight. Ann stared at her blankly.

“If you’re up, come out to work.”

Not come out to eat, but come out to work—at those words, she clutched her growling stomach and left the room. All of Rosie’s children filling the dining table looked at her. Ann stared at them, frozen stiff. Except for about two, they all looked older than her.

“This is Anna, that’s Mary, and this one’s Liz. The boy next to them is Peter. And next to him are Jack and Daniel.”

Ann looked at each child following Rosie’s introduction. They all had expressionless faces.

“Anna and Peter are starting school this year. So you’ll need to pack lunches every morning. Understand?”

Ann looked up at Rosie. The spots where Dora had beaten her still throbbed. Rosie looked down at Ann, who didn’t answer, seemingly frustrated.

“Your answer?”

Ann barely managed to say “Yes” in a cracked voice.

The work at Aunt Rosie’s house wasn’t much different from the work at Aunt Dora’s house. Ann rolled up her sleeves again and worked all day.

Fortunately, Aunt Rosie didn’t lay hands on her. When she got hurt somewhere, Rosie would give her money and tell her to see a doctor. Of course, only when she had money on hand. 

But even that was deducted from her wages, making it hard to see a doctor. Still, Rosie always said she was better than Dora.

Because at Dora’s house, she didn’t even get wages. 

Though it was embarrassing money to boast about—giving her the leftover money from selling just five flowers as wages—Rosie believed she was a much better person in that regard anyway.

From Ann’s perspective, Rosie was better than Dora too. She didn’t hit her and paid her wages regularly. But her aunt’s children were the problem.

“Sister, look at her. She looks just like a fox sitting on the stove. Right?”

Third daughter Liz asked her sister while ruffling Ann’s ash-gray hair. Anna, who’d been studying, turned her head. Ann, who’d been cleaning the sisters’ study room, stiffened her lips. 

Anna stared at her, then smirked.

“You’re right. What did you get on your skirt again?”

“Did you get sh*t on it? Hey, can’t you even use the outhouse properly?”

At Liz’s mischievous question, Ann’s lips hardened. Liz was Rosie’s daughter, the same age as Ann this year. Though she had freckles, she was quite pretty and received her parents’ love, and was also a child who received praise from the village children that she was like a princess. 

But since Ann arrived, such talk had completely disappeared, so she always found Ann disagreeable.

“Sister, she really smells.”

Liz, who’d been rummaging through Ann’s hair, covered her nose with her hand and pretended to gag. Ann didn’t react. Except for two, all of Rosie’s children were the same age as her or older.

They were all difficult for Ann. Dora’s children had at least been cute, following her around, but Rosie’s children truly made her feel like a servant attending young ladies and masters of the house.

“Hey! Follow me here!”

It was night. Someone who entered the nursery pulled off Ann’s blanket. Ann knew the owner of that voice. It was Peter. Behind him, she could see Liz and Mary. Ann staggered up and looked at them.

“I’m going to sleep.”

If she didn’t sleep now, she definitely wouldn’t be able to get up tomorrow. Ann looked at Peter standing in the center, her fists clenched tight.

“A maid daring to talk back to her master?”

Peter punched Ann in the stomach. At the fairly sharp punch for a child, Ann fell to the floor clutching her stomach. Peter giggled. Meanwhile, Liz grabbed Ann’s hair and lifted her up.

Ann was led outside the house by her cousins with her hands tied. The place they headed was Bluebilt’s cemetery. Ann screamed in terror, telling them not to do this.

She was scared. This was the first time she’d been bullied like this. Peter had occasionally dumped sewage on Ann or trampled the laundry she was doing to dirty it. 

Mary and Liz had also pinched and scratched her, but this was the first time they’d dragged her out at night like this.

Ann burst into tears. Then Mary gagged her with something she’d prepared and put a hood over her head. The path to the cemetery became much quieter. 

Ann struggled to avoid being dragged, but she was helpless.